{"id":136311,"date":"2025-06-17T06:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T06:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/136311\/"},"modified":"2025-06-17T06:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T06:20:10","slug":"rams-defense-ranked-among-the-worst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/136311\/","title":{"rendered":"Rams defense ranked among the worst"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/teams\/los-angeles-rams\/343\" data-autotag=\"f489e821-d3f9-4cff-bec5-7eaa0f4b51cb\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Los Angeles Rams<\/a> have a very young defense that developed nicely in 2024. However, it still has a lot of flaws heading into 2025.<\/p>\n<p>While the defensive front and edge rushers are great, the Rams&#8217; secondary, inside linebackers and safeties are the biggest concerns, which doesn&#8217;t leave a lot of room for error. L.A. didn&#8217;t bring in any star power to fortify those units yet and may not before the season begins.<\/p>\n<p>As such, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.profootballnetwork.com\/nfl-defense-rankings\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pro Football Network<\/a> didn&#8217;t rank the Rams&#8217; defense very highly based on its Defense+ metric. PFN projects the Rams to have the No. 24 defense in the league this year, right in front of the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/teams\/dallas-cowboys\/331\" data-autotag=\"7af2161d-a8dd-41a5-87e2-32eb5b028473\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Dallas Cowboys<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That\u2019s now three straight bottom-10 Defense+ seasons for the Rams, and there isn\u2019t much help for an instant fix,&#8221; PFN&#8217;s Kyle Soppe wrote. &#8220;Aaron Donald isn\u2019t returning, and Los Angeles used just one pick in the first four rounds on this side of the ball.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Rams overcame this flaw and won 10 games the previous season. This weakness caps their ceiling in a significant way, and it projects to be the case again over the next six months.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is the biggest problem with the Rams&#8217; 2025 aspirations. The offense is great and the defense proved late in the season that it can contend with good teams. But that alone won&#8217;t fix the issues that ended the season in the Divisional Round. Poona Ford, Nate Landman and two rookies won&#8217;t solve every problem, even if the quartet of Jared Verse, Braden Fiske, Byron Young and Kobie Turner is incredible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Rams have a very young defense that developed nicely in 2024. However, it still has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1635,4094,247,265,240,5996,5999,5995,1214,230,229,257,1547,5997,7,10153,1433,3417,5998,3418,8799,239,58,2641,8802,248,267,246,88,6,245,264,10994,10997,424,9,266,1385,3685,5952],"class_list":{"0":"post-136311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-aaron","9":"tag-aaron-donald","10":"tag-american","11":"tag-american-football","12":"tag-angeles","13":"tag-braden","14":"tag-braden-fiske","15":"tag-byron","16":"tag-byron-young","17":"tag-cowboys","18":"tag-dallas","19":"tag-dallas-cowboys","20":"tag-donald","21":"tag-fiske","22":"tag-football","23":"tag-ford","24":"tag-jared","25":"tag-jared-verse","26":"tag-kobie","27":"tag-kobie-turner","28":"tag-landman","29":"tag-los","30":"tag-los-angeles-rams","31":"tag-nate","32":"tag-nate-landman","33":"tag-national","34":"tag-national-sports","35":"tag-neutral","36":"tag-news","37":"tag-nfl","38":"tag-overall","39":"tag-overall-neutral","40":"tag-poona","41":"tag-poona-ford","42":"tag-rams","43":"tag-sports","44":"tag-sports-news","45":"tag-turner","46":"tag-verse","47":"tag-young"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}